


this is not the way to realize what you wanted

by badskeletonpuns



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, But Nothing Really Explicit, Fake/Pretend Relationship, False Identity, Fun With Fake Names, I'VE BEEN WAITING MY WHOLE LIFE TO USE THAT TAG, Lack of Communication, M/M, Neck Kissing, Rough Kissing, Smut, all the kissing, jupeter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-07
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-15 23:13:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10559318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badskeletonpuns/pseuds/badskeletonpuns
Summary: "When he kisses Nureyev, he tastes like blood and alcohol.On second thought, that’s probably Juno’s fault. As Nureyev pulls away, his eyes are half-shut and his lipstick smudged. “You’re a natural, Juno,” he murmurs, like they haven’t played this record before. Like they’ve only ever kissed the once, and Juno can’t stand to remember how it felt to be alone in his apartment after that kiss so he pulls Nureyev down into another embrace.After all, if the two of them going to convince this tracker that they’re in love, they’re going to need to practice."The post-The Final Resting Place Jupeter fake dating au you all knew you needed. Ft. kissing, embarrassing amounts of feelings, and our heroes pretending that they don't have all those embarrassing feelings.





	1. until our paths crossed again

**Author's Note:**

> this is wendy and welcome to my dream fic. i was highly tempted to just put some song lyrics as a summary but i didn't so here have them:  
>  _"And I wasn't looking for a promise or commitment_  
>  _But it was never just fun and I thought you were different_  
>  _This is not the way you realize what you wanted_  
>  _It's a bit too much too late if I'm honest"_  
>  thanks ed sheeran for my life and for like five different fic titles. also!!! thanks to [type_here](http://archiveofourown.org/users/type_here/pseuds/type_here) and [eroticshark](http://archiveofourown.org/users/eroticshark/profile) for reading my eight billion drafts, and thanks to [citadelofswords](http://archiveofourown.org/users/citadelofswords/pseuds/citadelofswords) for catching my pronoun mistakes and helping 2 figure out chapter breaks in this thing.

Blood is bitter and metallic on Juno’s lips, and his hands ache and his head is heavy and he is so goddamned tired.

He takes one step at a time to get out of the bar, knowing that if he thinks any further ahead the task of walking outside and catching a hover-bus back home will seem insurmountable. Behind him, he leaves a gang of petty thieves spitting insults and making threatening gestures. They got what they came for in the end, made themselves feel better by shoving the interloper out of their crappy bar. Beat him up a little like one would a stray dog who they didn’t want begging for food.

Juno ignores them. He got in a few good punches of his own, after all. They won’t forget him any time soon.

The ride home is long. Juno wants to lean against the seat in front of him, but it’s full to bursting with a couple arguing, piercing with words like knives and Juno’s face is still bleeding.

He breaths as deeply as he can stand, the atmosphere of the bus heavy with the stink of unwashed bodies and the oppressive hopelessness that seems to sink into the skin of anyone who spends too long in the Oldtown district of Hyperion. Just a couple more minutes, he promises himself, and you’ll be home.

But Juno knows what home is, and what it isn’t. It’s not his empty bed and the bottle on the bedside table, self-prescribed medication for the icepick headache where he used to have a functioning eye. He tells himself it’s not the memory of Peter’s hands, strong and deft, pinning Juno’s wrists above his head. Not Peter’s cologne, long since faded from the apartment. Not Peter’s voice, lips, not the way Peter trusted him.

He’s lying to himself and he knows it.

When the bus finally arrives at his stop, Juno almost misses it. His head is lolling against the side of the bus, almost asleep, cold metal and jarring movements be damned. But he just catches the driver calling his stop name for the last time and drags himself off the bus moments before the doors close and it takes off again.

He trudges up the steps to his apartment, and the elevator is broken because that is exactly the sort of day Juno is having.

He doesn’t let himself think about what day it is or why he was in that bar in the first place.

The stairs up to his apartment make the bruises on his sides ache, deep down to his bones, and his migraine seems to pulse in time with every step he takes. Juno is fairly certain he’s going to just sit down and not stand back up again with each passing second. He makes it to his apartment, unlocks the door, and barely remembers to shove it closed behind him before he collapses onto his couch.

He isn’t planning to sleep but he does, curled up into a tight ball on his lumpy couch with one hand pressed to his forehead and the other pulled against his chest like he's protecting himself against an unknown enemy.

It's nighttime when Juno wakes. His sides still ache and the blood on his face and knuckles has long since dried. It cracks with his movements, itches where it covers unbroken skin. Some of it's not his. Too much of it is. He has no way to be sure until he's washed his face.

There's a bitter breeze coming through the spot where his window doesn't quite meet the frame, carrying with it flecks of Martian sand and the scent of the city below. It stinks.

Juno is used to that smell, though, and the prickling sensation of the scabbed blood on his face and sand stinging his exposed flesh. He’ll get up in a minute. He's just tired. A couple more minutes on the couch can't hurt, right?

A couple minutes turns into a couple more, and the first of Mars’ two moons has crept past his window by the time his communicator pings. The sound is coming from the floor, across his living room. If Juno wants to answer it he's going to have to get off the couch.

It could be a client, and another client is another month Juno can pay the rent. Another couple dollars he can stuff in the jar labeled with a stylized eye drawn on the note taped to it (courtesy of Rita). It's still mostly empty, and Juno knows he's going to have to deal with the lack of depth perception for a long while yet.

His communicator pings again, and at last Juno pulls himself up off his couch and stands on unsteady feet. He takes a moment to collect himself, and then another, and then a third, until his communicator beeps insistently.

It's lying on the floor at the door, half-inside one of Juno’s coat packets.

He sits down on the floor before he answers, steadies himself on the cold simwood wall. “Juno Steel, private eye,” he says before the caller can introduce themselves. “Business hours are nowhere near now, but depending on the case and the money involved I’m sure we can arrange something.”

The voice on the other end of the phone is familiar, and if this person is calling themselves nothing more than a client Juno is going to laugh until his lungs give out.

“Hello, Detective,” Peter Nureyev says. His voice is - it's not Peter, Juno thinks. Rex, maybe? There's a gloss over it, one that draws to mind bedroom eyes and tousled hair and the smell of sex. Nureyev is hiding something, and Juno doesn't know if it's from him or from another threat. “I need your help.”

The last time Juno saw this man, Juno had left him sleeping alone on a hotel bed.

The next time he saw him, it would be very early in the morning in Juno’s apartment. They had come to an agreement on the phone - Nureyev had money, he was being tracked by an old enemy he couldn't seem to shake, and wanted Juno’s help.

Nureyev hadn’t introduced himself on the phone, hadn’t said a word about any of their adventures that had occurred after he'd left Juno that note all that time ago. It was like none of it had ever happened, except - except there was a hitch in his voice that hadn't been there before. Or maybe Juno just hadn't been able to hear it before, but he had begun to know Peter Nureyev back then and even now he knows what a lie sounds like on that man’s lips.

He doesn't say anything about it.

After all, he had been the one to leave that night after they took down Miasma.

Once the two of them hang up on each other, Juno hauls himself to his feet. His muscles protest, and he realizes he still hasn't checked if his ribs are bruised or just cracked, and there is a very real possibility that he has a concussion. There's also still blood flaking off the sides of his face, streaking his hands when he reaches up to brush it away.

A shower is in order. And a drink.

His hair is damply curling around his ears and he hasn't gotten that drink when the knock comes at his door.  

Nureyev looks dramatically different - his hair, his clothes, everything down to his polished nails and the arch of his eyebrows says trouble neatly wrapped in a tight little dress. To be fair, the ‘trouble’ part of the whole equation hasn’t changed one bit.

It is unfairly sexy.

Nureyev didn’t mention a fake name on the phone, but there is no doubt that the person sauntering into Juno’s living room is another one of his personas. And if this is the way they’re playing it - if Nureyev’s going to cast his eyes about Juno’s room like he’s never seen it before, if he’s going to pretend his voice doesn’t catch on Juno’s name every time he says it - then Juno can play this game.

“You got a name?” he asks, and his voice is rougher than he expected it to be.

Nureyev glances over his shoulder at Juno and the move is so textbook Juno almost has to laugh. He doesn’t, can’t, not in the face of those dark eyes and the memory of those lips on his. When Nureyev smiles, Juno knows he’s doomed. “How forward, Detective. My given name is Orion Datura, but you may call me Orion.”

Orion - the sleek name fits this new persona with all the grace of a rich dame pulling on opera gloves before a night out. Still. Juno doesn’t think he’s going to be able to shake the habit of calling him ‘Nureyev’, at least in his mind. It’s gonna be enough of a pain in the ass to remember to say ‘Orion’ every time, especially after Juno had gotten used to calling this man ‘Nureyev’ aloud. But he’s lost the right to that name now. For the sake of the case, he’ll pretend he never knew it at all.  “So, Orion,” Juno says, and he lets himself savor the curve of the vowels on his tongue. “I’m going to need some more details on this case of yours.”

“I thought you’d never ask.” Nureyev sits on the back of Juno’s couch, and the contrast between the slick satin of his dress and the rough upholstery is jarring. He looks like a man out of time, lit in high contrast by the light of Mars’ second moon coming through the window. “There’s someone.”

“Isn’t there always?”

“Not like that, Detective Steel,” Nureyev assures him. Juno doesn’t believe him for a second. “I would not have called the two of us friends, but we were certainly not enemies. At least, not at the start. We worked together for some time, but xe proved to be,” Nureyev pauses, frowns. “How do I put this nicely? xe proved to be somewhat of a traitor to our cause. In the end, at least, we both received a very… just reward for our services.”

Juno has the feeling the other person involved in this did not get the reward xe had been hoping for. He walks over to kitchen and pours himself that drink. “Those are some great details, pal, but you still haven’t answered the real question here. What exactly is my purpose on this case? In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m a little rusty on the whole sharpshooting deal at this point.”

Nureyev’s laugh is a little too sharp, too practiced. “I am well aware of this fact, and believe me - I have that side of the equation covered on my own.” He’s up off the back of the couch in an instant, and is sidling up to Juno in another. That dress of his bares a hell of a lot of skin, and it’s all just a hair’s breadth from Juno. “No, Detective, I need you for another facet of your skills.” The touch of his hand on Juno’s wrist is unexpected, so much so that Juno lets the other man pull him away from his drink to face each other. “I need you to live with me.”

“... What?”

“Not for too long, I promise. I’m already being tailed by someone working for my enemy, but they don’t know that I know they’re following me. I don’t want to let hir know that I’ve spotted their agent just yet, and so I need someone else to keep an eye on them.” His hand on Juno’s wrist tightens, pulling him closer. “But as I mentioned, I don’t want hir getting suspicious that I’ve hired someone. And xe knows more than one of my names - xe knows an older name of mine the best, but xe knew of my escapades as Rex Glass and most importantly, xe knows that Juno Steel and Rex Glass had history.”

“What- Nu-Orion, this is insane! What are you even asking me to do here?”

Nureyev shakes his head, and when a piece of hair falls into his face Juno is tempted to reach up and brush it back behind his ear. “Isn’t it obvious? I need you to track whoever is tracking me by watching the people around me on my normal routine. Since I can’t have them realizing the tracker has become the tracked, I need another reason for you to be spending so much time with me.”

Juno gets it right around the time Nureyev’s hand slides up from his wrist to his shoulder, and his other hand is on Juno’s waist, pulling him in like the spider to the fly.

“Would you like to go out for breakfast tomorrow, darling?” Nureyev purrs, his lips dangerously close to Juno’s. “I’m sure we’ll be very busy tonight, reconnecting after the fallout from that case with the mask has settled down.”

When he kisses Nureyev, he tastes like blood and alcohol.

On second thought, that’s probably Juno’s fault. As Nureyev pulls away, his eyes are half-shut and his lipstick smudged. “You’re a natural, Juno,” he murmurs, like they haven’t played this record before. Like they’ve only ever kissed the once, and Juno can’t stand to remember how it felt to be alone in his apartment after that kiss so he pulls Nureyev down into another embrace.

After all, if the two of them going to convince this tracker that they’re in love, they’re going to need to practice.

* * *

 

The next morning dawns a murky burgundy, like rust creeping up the blade of an old knife. Juno wakes up when the light creeps into his bedroom, casting everything in that same red tone. Nothing in his room has changed, but something about the light quality and the fact that Nureyev is lying on his couch in the living room makes it feel emptier than usual, stripped down to its bones.

Juno feels stripped down himself, left bare by last night’s events. He and Nureyev had surprisingly not ended up in bed with each other… But Juno probably would have said yes, if Nureyev had asked. For a moment, he considers the possibility that last night was just a really vivid hallucination brought on by the combination of a head wound and alcohol. He continues to entertain the idea as he gets ready.

Nureyev can’t possibly be here. Even moreso, he can’t be planning to stay here, here in Hyperion City where ‘the grind’ could be a stranger dancing in a club or an industrial sander used by the Triad to convince unlucky mules to give up sensitive information. It’s just not a plausible scenario, and Juno almost has himself convinced that he’s right until someone knocks on his bedroom door.

He freezes, gaze flying to his gun on the floor before he comes back to his senses. Right. The universe, apparently, is out to get him and did bring Peter Nureyev back into his life. Juno pulls on his eye patch but doesn’t bother putting a shirt on before opening the door. He fixes Nureyev with a glare that he has been assured is, if anything, more frightening with the addition of the patch. “I did not agree to being woken up this early, Orion,” he growls.

Nureyev just shrugs, and literally no human being should look this elegant before noon. “We had breakfast plans.”

Juno sighs. “Of course we did.”

* * *

 

Nureyev is still in last night’s dress, now well-creased, and he hasn’t fixed any of his makeup that Juno may have smudged last night. There is also more than one hickey just under his jaw that Juno remembers leaving all too well. On anyone else, the look would definitely be categorized as ‘Walk of Shame’. This new persona of Nureyev’s wears it like a second skin, and Juno gets the feeling Orion Datura has no problem with public displays of affection.

God, this case is already a train wreck.

Juno lets himself be led out of his apartment, lets Nureyev push him up against the outside door and kiss his neck while Juno alternately scans the streets for the person tracking Nureyev and gets distracted by the feeling of Nureyev’s lips on his skin.

(His teeth are sharp, scraping skin and it almost hurts but Juno is still grasping at Nureyev’s shoulders, pulling him closer, asking for more.)

Nureyev pulls away with that fox’s smirk and his lipstick is well and truly ruined. It’s probably all over Juno’s neck now, splotches of blood-red over flushed skin and bruises from last night. “Shall I call a cab, darling?” he asks, and Juno almost doesn’t catch the words, he’s too distracted. He nods anyway, and Nureyev pulls out a sleek communicator from somewhere.

The cab is easily called, and the drive there flies past in a whirl of Nureyev’s hands on him and Nureyev’s voice in his ear, whispering details he’s gleaned about his tracker, their habits, and the places they might be watching from. Juno takes it in with more calm than he thought he would, his hands still and his mind cool. He can’t afford to get attached, he reminds himself, but every time he sees that smile on Nureyev’s face, remembers those teeth like fire against his skin… His resolve weakens just a little more.

In the end, by the time the cab has pulled up outside an artsy cafe with prices only the Kanagawas wouldn’t flinch at, Juno has made a decision. He’s still very much attracted to Nureyev - persona or no, the man wields sex appeal like a weapon and Juno’s shields are down. But he’s not about to let anyone say Juno Steel is anything other than stubborn as hell, and he can deal with his attraction like a mature adult without remembering (or more importantly, feeling) any pesky emotions.

Besides, there’s no way Nureyev wants him back now.

That said, Juno can deal with his own attraction by taking full advantage of this false relationship and getting his hands on Nureyev whenever he wants. Juno grins at the thought, and when Nureyev glances over he raises an eyebrow at the expression - it’s not a common sight on Juno. “Something on your mind?”

Juno doesn’t say anything, he just reaches over to pull Nureyev into a heated kiss.

This case is a disaster, but Juno is going to enjoy it anyway. The cabby doesn’t even seem to care that they’re necking like teenagers in the back of his car, just idles in front of the cafe while Nureyev goes pliant under Juno’s hands and whines into his mouth. Juno is leaning over the middle seat between them, seatbelt long forgotten and about two seconds away from climbing into Nureyev’s lap, witnesses be damned.

Nureyev pulls on his hair, tips his head back till he’s whispering against Juno’s neck. This is great and all for keeping whatever he’s saying a secret, except that he probably wants Juno to actually understand his words. It’s more than a little difficult to do so with Nureyev paying so much attention to Juno’s neck, already sensitive in general and even moreso with the events of last night and this morning. Juno is gasping, scrabbling against the cheap simleather seats and totally, totally lost in the feeling.

“Juno!” Nureyev is whispering into Juno’s ear, now, having paused his efforts to take Juno apart in the backseat of a cab. “The tracker! They’re outside the car, seated at the cafe. Orion likes to take his conquests here, and they know it. Let’s go.” He tosses a wad of cash at the cabby, who catches it and doesn’t even check its authenticity before nodding and letting the two of them step out onto the pavement.

“Just how rich are you, Orion?” Juno asks, following a few steps behind the man as he leads the two of to a central table. The rectangular table looks like real glass, paired with an umbrella that’s somehow remained a purposeful pastel rather than some washed-out shade. Two flimsy, wicker-looking chairs are set to either side of the table, and Juno sits warily.

Unsurprisingly, Nureyev shrugs. “I’m not sure, really. Enough.” He leans forward across the table, like he’s sharing a secret. “It’s mostly my late wife’s, to be honest. She did always adore me so! Such a pity she died so young.” His voice is all airs and innocence, the voice of someone who definitely murdered their wife for her fortune.

Juno is pretty certain that he shouldn’t be turned on by that.

He kind of is.

Throughout the meal, it’s a struggle to keep his focus divided. Part of him has to remain focused on the illusion, focused on the smell of Nureyev’s cologne in the air and the way he gesticulates with his hand. The other half is on guard, sharper than Nureyev’s teeth and warier than a rabbit in a den of foxes.

Nureyev’s mysterious tracker is smart. They’re in a table off to the side - not so much in a corner as to be suspicious, but far enough that they have a good view of all the tables and no one else has quite as good of a view as they do. Tall, Juno notes in between Nureyev stealing bites of Juno’s ridiculously expensive croissant, but not especially so. A little slimmer than average, maybe, he guesses, but they’re wearing a heavier coat and Juno is distracted by Nureyev licking chocolate off of a strawberry in an unnecessarily suggestive manner.

He can’t get a good view of their face, not without paying too much attention to someone who is, to Juno Steel, supposedly another random stranger.

The breakfast date whips past quickly, and before Juno realizes it, Nureyev is signing a check and standing up.

“Are you ready to head back to my place, darling?” he asks, extending a hand confidently. Juno gets the feeling not many people say no to an invitation from Orion Datura.

He likes the idea of being the first. “I do have a job, ‘darling’,” he says, in a mocking imitation of Orion’s arched accent, and folds his arms across his chest. “I can’t spend all my time christening our relationship in the back of a cab.”

Nureyev pouts, drawing his hand back to his chest in dramatic offence. “You’re breaking my heart, I hope you realize.”

Juno shakes his head. “You’re ridiculous. I should call a cab.” And then - just because he wants to, and now he can, if they’re pretending to be what they are and Nureyev is pretending to be who he is - Juno smiles, and closes the distance between him and Nureyev. They’re chest to chest and all Juno can see is Nureyev’s face, all he can feel is the press of their bodies, all he can smell is Nureyev’s cologne in the air. “Unless… You think you can convince me otherwise.”

“Oh, detective,” Nureyev drawls. “I would love to.”

Nureyev’s argument consists of three things: the way he bites his lip before he kisses Juno, teeth sharp and white against red lips, the pressure of his hands on Juno’s waist, slipping under his shirt to ghost over his skin, and the dangerous sensation of something unbearably sappy curling in the pit of Juno’s stomach.

It is extremely convincing.

So he kisses Nureyev back, winds his hands into the other man’s hair and pulls. Juno barely even notices when Nureyev’s mysterious tracker takes out a notebook, writes something down, and leaves.

But he does notice, long enough to pull far enough away from Nureyev that the smell of him was no longer quite so intoxicating, his lips were not irresistibly magnetic. “Are we leaving or not, Orion?” he demands. There’s less ‘steel’ in Juno’s voice than usual, and he blames all of it on the way Nureyev is still gazing at him like he wants to devour him. “I think we need to get to know each other a little better.”

He’s right, of course. If Juno Steel doesn’t learn enough about Orion and the differences between him and Nureyev to fool someone paid to tail him, he’s bound to blow their cover at some point.

Nureyev calls another cab like the service isn’t pure extortion, and the flight to his high-rise apartment passes like a kidney stone - which is to say, slow and excruciatingly painful. This driver clears their throat loudly when Nureyev reaches over to take Juno’s hand, and scoffs at the money Nureyev offers them in an effort to convince them to look the other way.

“Honor,” they insist, “cannot be bought.” And they turn up the commercials blasting through the distorted speakers and sneer whenever they check on Nureyev and Juno in the rearview mirror.

They can, however, be bribed to drop them off on the roof of the skyscraper instead of on ground level. So much for honor. This area of the city is technically zoned for multi-level flight, but no one is supposed to land on rooftops without proper permits.

With enough money, a person could write “I can do what I want” on a piece of paper and have it serve as any permit they like.

Nureyev leads Juno out of the cab with a gentle hand on his arm, only to abruptly change directions once the door of the vehicle was shut. He pins Juno up against the hot metal, mouthing along his jaw. “That cab driver could have gotten a tip and a show,” he muttered against Juno’s skin, “so it’s really their loss.”

The driver in question takes off without waiting for the two of them to stop, and Juno almost falls on his ass before Nureyev grabs the collar of his shirt and pulls him back to his feet. They still almost fall over, but the end result comes out in favor of Nureyev’s grace and dancer’s strength, rather than Juno’s solid muscle and Mars’ gravity.

Juno follows Nureyev into the building, a quick swipe of a keycard all it takes to unlock the door. Rich folk in rich neighborhoods, unworried about the crime that haunts the rest of the city until it steals the keycard out of their silk-lined pockets and the expensive art right off their walls.

Not that Juno would ever rob someone. A good, law-abiding citizen like himself would only dream of punching those entitled jerks in the face, and would never act on those dreams. … Unless given good enough cause.

Walking in, Juno has to stop himself from rolling his eye. Of course Orion Datura wouldn’t settle for anything less than the best money could buy: his apartment is one of a very small number that share the top floor of the building, spacious rooms and wide windows, modern art pretending to be furniture, and omnipresent white light that seems to come from no particular source. It’s over-the-top, ridiculously expensive, and exactly what Juno expected.

“Be a dear, Juno, and help me get out of this dress?” Nureyev calls over his shoulder, and Juno abruptly stops thinking about the apartment. Nureyev is standing at one of the floor-to-ceiling windows, washed in the shifting lights of the city and the ruby sun. “I want to slip into something more comfortable.”

Juno walks over to Nureyev and stands at his side. The other man remains focused on the view of the city below them, eyes following hover-cabs and petty crime, gaze catching on the red smog that erased the horizon and the neon signs plastered every other foot. Juno has seen it all a million times, but it changes every day.

Today he isn’t giving the city a second glance. Nureyev is still performing, even in his own apartment, and it’s magnetizing. The flirty head tilt, hair roguishly falling to one side, the precisely timed glances at Juno. It’s all Orion, all someone who’d only known Juno for two days but was already willing to push him up against walls, cab doors, to slip his hand up Juno’s shirt in public just to let everyone else know only he was allowed to do it. All someone who would wreck Juno like a speeder caught in the middle of a Martian sandstorm.

“Are you ever going to help, angel, or are you just going to stare at me all day?” Nureyev leans forward, voice low and husky. “I know I’m a very pretty sight, but I promise I’m even prettier underneath.” He taps Juno on the nose before turning his back to the detective.

Juno swallows. The dress cuts low across Nureyev’s back - and by low, Juno means that if the fabric cut any lower Nureyev would be getting written up for public indecency. The front of the dress is much higher, ending in a thin strap of that same dark satin that wraps around Nureyev’s throat. The whole thing is held on a simple clasp at the back of Nureyev’s neck.

All Juno has to do is undo the clasp.

Nureyev is still in front of him, like a marble statue of some ancient earth deity. Juno reaches forward, fingers just brushing against Nureyev's skin. Nureyev is warm, his skin smooth under Juno’s hands. Juno can't seem to get the catch on his first try, fumbling the thin strip of fabric.

Maybe he's a little distracted by the way the light patterns across Nureyev’s bare back, but no one has to know that.

The clasp slips free, and the top half of the dress falls to hang low off Nureyev’s hips, tugging the fabric down. For a second Juno sees nothing but skin and there’s so goddamn much of it, and he’s reaching for where the fabric ends without thinking and he can’t think better of the action till his hands are already brushing against Nureyev.

Juno’s hands are cold, and Nureyev is burning up.

He really should back away, should go stand under a cold shower and think about sewers and blood and things that break other things in an ugly way, except now Nureyev is glancing over his shoulder at Juno and Juno is the thing breaking in an ugly way. He settles his hands on Nureyev’s waist, pulls the thief back till their bodies press against each other.

The dress slips a little further, and it’s painfully obvious that Nureyev isn’t wearing anything at all underneath it.

  
Which is an idiotic thing to do, but nothing about this was smart to begin with.

Nureyev leans into him, and his breathing is hushed and he’s rocking back and forth on his heels, slowly, rhythmically, and Juno is making the most embarrassing sounds he’s ever made in life. His hands have to be digging into Nureyev’s hips by now, have to be leaving marks like paint smudges or hickeys and - and Nureyev doesn’t seem to care at all, grinding back against Juno and moaning a little when Juno lets his hands reach a little further forward, a little farther down.

Juno curses, loud and harsh and only because if he hadn’t he might have said something unforgivable like Peter, Peter, please. Nureyev’s answering grin has none of Orion’s slick sex appeal, just his own fox-wit and slyness. He’s got Juno right where he wants him, and he knows it.

And Juno, he can’t find it in himself to want to be anywhere else.


	2. swing by my room around ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> maroon is not technically an acceptable tuxedo color for a black tie/tuxedo level of fashion, but this is mars and i do what i want. i read a lot of mens fashion articles for this okay. also blue and red aren’t complementary colors but see above: i do what i want.

It’s the middle of the day. Midafternoon, maybe. Juno’s not sure. His communicator is beeping with multiple missed calls but he’s sprawled over a couch in Nureyev’s living room and getting up sounds like a hell of a lot of effort. It’s not even a nice sprawl - this couch probably costs more than Juno’s whole apartment, but somehow manages to be just as uncomfortable as Juno’s crappy furniture.

His lack of a desire to get up may be abetted by Nureyev, who is snoring and draped over Juno like a human blanket. The dress lies forgotten on the floor, and Juno lies to himself and promises that this won’t happen again.

It’s hard to believe, especially because whenever he glances down, Nureyev’s head is resting on Juno’s chest. The other man’s eyes are closed, revealing patches of eyeshadow and smudged black liner. He looks relaxed, he looks like  _ Nureyev _ . Even Peter Nureyev can’t act when he’s asleep. Juno’s pretty sure that he would if he could.

He’s glad that Nureyev can’t act right now. The light cast into the room is automatically modulated by the tech embedded in the glass, altered from harsh Martian sunlight to something a little softer, a little gentler. It shimmers along the plane of Nureyev’s back and shoulders, catches the color in his dark hair.

Nureyev snores a little, and it’s kind of adorable and Juno will never tell a soul that he thought that.

Juno doesn’t think about how he’s been here once before.

Not here in this high-rise apartment with sunlight coming through the windows, sleeping next to a liar who he had lied to in return. But  _ here, _ lying in a hotel bed, watching this same man sleep in the neon glow of Hyperion’s night before leaving him behind.

Who does he think he’s fooling? He thinks about that night.

He can’t stop thinking about it, because as much as he tells himself he does not deserve the memory of Nureyev saying ‘call me a fool, detective’, Nureyev’s lips soft against his… As much as he tells himself he doesn’t deserve that, the memory is a drug and Juno is hooked. He tempers the guilt by reminding himself of how he left, how Nureyev woke up and would have immediately guessed what Juno had done.

Or something like that.

It’s not like Juno’s gone over that moment a thousand times, imagined in high definition in a hundred different nightmares the second that must have passed between Nureyev waking up and Nureyev realizing Juno had left him there alone. It’s not like that at all.

He pushes Nureyev away from him, shifts his weight till he’s lying against the couch and not on top of Juno. It’s hard not to get… distracted.

Nureyev is a very attractive man, and he is very naked, and Juno is hard-pressed to let go of him when he’s so close. He knows that if he wakes up Nureyev they’ll both get distracted, and he won’t be able to leave.

Which.

That’s what he’s doing, isn’t it?

Juno Steel is sneaking out of the room again, because he is allergic to emotions and to mornings-after. (Afternoons-after? Just the concept of ‘after’.)

He pulls on his clothes and snags his communicator on the way out, but doesn’t check his messages. If Rita is still Rita, there’s no way he doesn’t have a series of increasingly worried and increasingly loud voice messages from her about his whereabouts, and Juno doesn’t want to ruin his escape now.

The door opens silently at a touch of Juno’s hand, and he’s halfway out of the apartment when he hears the sigh. He freezes and hates himself for it, because Juno Steel is not a goddamn prey animal but he can’t seem to stop acting like one.

“You know, detective, I’d rather hoped you wouldn’t make a habit out of this. Leaving once was mysteriously sexy, and I will always support mysteriously sexy. Twice? Now you’re just playing with my heart, darling.”

Hook.

Juno has one foot out the door, but Nureyev’s voice is husky and low. He’s probably hanging over the back of the couch making eyes at Juno right now, and Juno is not going to look back.

He looks back. (He’s right, of course. Nureyev is leaning heavily against the back of the couch, eyes half-lidded and every inch the come-hither femme fatale.)

Line.

“Juno,” he calls, teasing the syllables and reaching out with one hand. “At least stay for a bite. I haven’t even had the chance to show off my superb cooking skills yet.” He smirks at Juno, and there is Orion.

Sinker.

He’ll text Rita later today, let her know he’s safe and probably won’t make it in to work today. It can’t hurt to stay a little longer. They can plan more ways to draw out the person tailing Nureyev, pool their knowledge. Staying seems more like a good idea the longer Juno thinks about it.

So he shuts the door behind him and drops his communicator and coat on the floor. “Fine, ‘Orion’. I’ll stay.” He cuts off Nureyev’s excited intake of breath with a hand held out to stop him. “But stop making that face at me, we’re only going to get some work done on your case. Nothing else.”

Nureyev’s smirk, if anything, only gets more exaggerated. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Juno just shakes his head. “Put some clothes on and come sit at the table.” Nureyev pouts but obeys, disappearing into another room in his apartment to find clean clothes. He leaves Juno alone in the room, and… Juno’s a private investigator for a reason.

He always did like to snoop through other people’s stuff.

The search starts in the kitchen, mainly because it’s the only place in this minimalistic box that actually has places to put things that aren’t creepy modern art or terrible furniture. Juno goes through a couple drawers of surprisingly normal utensils, glassware, and dish towels before happening on something intriguing: the stuff drawer.

Everyone has one - that one drawer in the kitchen where they just drop literally anything that has no other place. Miscellaneous items like that can say a lot about a person.

As for Nureyev, his drawer seems to be as infinitely spacious as his pockets had been - there is way more stuff in here than should logically fit. Multiple sets of metal keys and locks, as well as several of the digital or keycard variety. The occasional fake ID. Something that might have been an apple before the space rot set in, markers of various colors, doodles of planets and animals mixed in with a few hand-drawn sets of schematics for weapons or building plans. A pair of handcuffs.

All interesting in their own right, but even though Juno’s not sure what he’s looking for, he’s pretty damn sure none of these things are it.

A door slams down the hallway, and Juno shoves the drawer shut and jogs over to the table to get there before Nureyev re-enters the room.

The thief enters, dressed casually in loose sweatpants and a disaster of a crop-top that is bright red and has two eyes emblazoned across the chest with a black fringe hanging beneath them like severely misapplied mascara. The fringe is long enough that it hangs below the end of the top, brushing against Nureyev’s stomach. Juno is filled with the intense desire to burn every stitch of it. He quells the desire, and instead leans over the marble tabletop to look Nureyev in the eyes.

“What does Juno Steel know about Rex Glass and Orion Datura?” he asks. “How are the two - the three? - connected?”

Nureyev sits down on top of the table. “Excellent question, Detective. Well, we all know the story of Rex and Juno.”

Juno raises an eyebrow. “Do we.”

“But of course! Unlikely partners, thrown together on an assignment by those more powerful than they. Sparks fly the moment they meet, even as Rex is torn by his ulterior motives and Juno by his fear of relationships.” Before Juno can make any comments on ‘fear of relationships’, Nureyev sprawls out across the table. The expanse of cool stone that had separated them is reduced to mere inches between their hands. “They have a single night of passion, heated and dramatic, before…”

Before Juno left Nureyev, alone and cold in a hotel bed.

Nureyev clears his throat. “Before Rex was called away on business, and darling Juno is all by himself. Now, Rex has never known when to leave well enough alone and he cannot get that detective from his mind. The detective in question would never admit it but he is pining for the thief who stole his heart, and so when the first package from off-planet arrives, smelling of that particular cologne… He opens it. Things get heated, then they get serious, and before they know it Rex is spilling details about his secret identities and Juno is keeping a cupboard of Rex’s things in his apartment just in case he shows up on Mars again. When Orion shows up and explains who he really is? Well, Juno would do anything to help Rex at this point, no matter what name he’s going by. Cue scene.”

“I knew you were a liar from the moment I met you, but I never realized you were such a damn romantic. You’ve just about swept me off my feet.”

When Nureyev laughs, Juno knows that the con they’re spinning is more than convincing enough to fool Juno and maybe even Nureyev himself.

He missed hearing Nureyev laugh, and before he can curb the desire he’s speaking again, leaning closer to Nureyev. “What, do I not look ‘swept’ to you? What’s a lady got to do around here to prove something like that?”

The table shifts with the force of Nureyev’s movement, because the man is up and off of it in an instant. He is standing so close to Juno that Juno can see the dusting of freckles across his cheeks. Nureyev must have taken a moment to wipe down his face, because there’s no trace of the makeup he’d been wearing before.

“Detective,” Nureyev purrs. “I thought you’d never ask.”

There’s a formal party tonight, hosted by who else but the Kanagawas, and everyone who is anyone will be there. Nureyev is certain his erstwhile ally wouldn’t dare miss it. It would be the perfect opportunity to flaunt their ‘relationship’. Something in Nureyev’s voice when he says it tells Juno that said relationship will bother this person more than Nureyev had said before. And in addition to that, Nureyev mentions that it’s highly likely that they’ve allied themselves with one of Hyperion’s richer families.

The Kanagawas more than qualify as one of Hyperion’s richest families.

The rest of that day passes in a whirl of buying more clothes than anyone could possibly need for one party, ensuring that Orion Datura and his plus-one have an invitation to this party, and planning for the event itself.

By the time they’re done, bags from high-end clothing stores are piled on Nureyev’s couch and the table is covered with papers and plans. Nureyev pulled his hair back into a bun at some point in the day, and Juno keeps glancing at the angles of his face laid bare, the way he tosses his head to get loose pieces out of his face. He probably knows Juno’s looking, hell, that’s probably why he’s doing it.

Doesn’t change the fact that Juno can’t seem to stop.

“Alright,” Juno says at last, and collapses onto the couch without regard for the expensive clothing beneath him. “So here’s our plan - we’re Diana Moon and Orion Datura, society darlings in adoration of each other. We get in like any other couple with legitimate invitations, play up the honeymoon-stage mooning to put your tracker off guard, and sneak off to the guest wing to try and find your mysterious enemy’s room. Cameramen show up, distract them by staging a dramatic fight or getting real handsy with each other. Human guards show up, same routine. Sound good?”

Nureyev is standing in front of a mirror he’d dragged out from another room in his apartment, holding different outfits in front of him and making faces at each one. “Well, if you’re asking me, darling-”

“-I am-”

“-then I don’t really see why there’s an or between a dramatic fight and getting, how did you put it? ‘Real handsy with each other’.” He eyes Juno’s reflection in the mirror with a smirk, and Juno resolutely does not think about those teeth. “I mean, violence and sex sell when separate, but when put together?” He spins around, a dress of rich blues in some sort of shimmery, floaty fabric that Juno can’t name in one hand and a deep maroon tuxedo in the other. “Why, then you’ve got yourself a hit. Now, do you want the suit or the dress? I have each in both of our sizes.”

“Rate the outfits based on how easily you can punch someone in them.” Juno needs freedom of movement in his clothing, especially tonight.

“The dress, then.” He tosses the outfit to Juno, who only barely manages to stop the light fabric from slipping through his fingers.

“Hey, be careful. Not all of us have such perfect hand-eye coordination,” Juno grumbles half-heartedly, and locks himself in Nureyev’s bathroom to change. Even with the door closed, the light in the room is almost perfectly matched to the natural light outside. It’s also massive, with separate shower and bath areas that are larger than anyone could possibly need. The room aside, this dress is… clingier than it looked when Nureyev was holding it, emphasizing his waist and baring his shoulders and neck. Juno immediately misses his heavy coat. At least this dress hit his ankles, and flowed more loosely around his legs. He’d be able to run, and maybe even hide a weapon in a thigh holster.

Nureyev is buttoning his suit jacket when Juno reenters the main room, and neither of them say anything for a solid minute. Juno has seen Nureyev in fairly formal outfits before, but he will never get used to how good they look. He has to admit, looking at the two of them in the mirror, they look good together. The deep jewel tones of their outfits are a perfect complement to each other, and Juno’s memories tell him that the two of them in general have always complemented each other. They fit, and he recalls Nureyev’s hands on his waist and being so, so close…

He doesn’t have long to reminisce, because soon Nureyev is pulling him back into the bathroom to put on makeup for both of them.

Juno is fairly certain he’s been on crime scenes less gory than the following hour or so of makeup application. But the end result is worth it - they look just like any high-society couple out for a night on the town. It’s not Juno’s usual style on the days he feels up to putting on makeup, but it should serve its purpose here well enough. It feels a little like armor, if he’s honest.

Although makeup won’t stop half as many bullets.

The line is long, the bouncers are massive relatives of Croesus Kanagawa, and the noise and lights coming from the mansion are beyond compare.

It’s definitely a Kanagawa affair.

Juno is doing his best impression of smitten. The act isn’t as difficult as it should be, the lie running a little too close to the way he actually feels. He’s tripping over his heels, low though they are, honest-to-God giggling at Nureyev’s witticisms, never moving far from Nureyev’s side. The whole nine yards. It works, too. Their ticket and their attitude get them inside without a second glance.

Min won’t be here tonight (at least, not during the actual party). She’ll be behind the scenes, ensuring that the myriad of tasks required to throw an event of this size all go off without a hitch. Cassandra’s still imprisoned, and Cecil’s practically the guest of honor. If all goes as it should, he’ll be far too busy with the other guests to pay attention to Orion Datura and his plus one.

Of course, nothing ever goes as it should, which is why they both have smuggled weapons under their clothes and have their getaway vehicle hidden nearby. No time to wait for a cab if you’re on the run from cameramen.

Juno catches a glimpse of himself in one of the long mirrors that line the entryway. Even if Cecil did notice the two of them among the glitz and glam that form this city’s upper crust, they’re practically unrecognizable.

Nureyev is flitting from server to server, laughing with and at other guests and picking up glasses of champagne without even drinking them. He seems almost to shimmer (although that may be the thousands of twinkling sim-candles lighting the ballroom).

“Diana, darling, have you tried the canapés? They’re absolutely divine, you must have one.”

“Love, come here and have a sip of this champagne. Richfield promised me it came all the way from Earth!”

“Lady Mackaighleigh just told me the most intriguing gossip about our dear hosts, Diana, and if you’d come a little closer I could share the secret.”

Juno does come closer. Really, he doesn’t ever go further away; he and Nureyev are rarely more than a foot apart. Other people pay them no mind – or if they do, it’s nothing beyond the attention given to every handsy couple present at the party that evening. The same mixture of envy and spite from those without partners is contrasted with the laughter and knowing glances from other couples. It’s almost too much for Juno, and he’s breathless. Nureyev’s hands are holding tight to his own until they’re not, and then one hand is on his waist hot through his thin dress, and the other’s offering him a drink, and everything just keeps swirling around him.

It’s intoxicating.

He might be a little drunk. Whatever the Kanagawas are serving, it’s strong.

Out of the corning of his eye, Juno catches the rare glimpse of someone he’s pretty sure is Nureyev’s tracker, but he can’t be sure. Peripheral vision hadn’t been his strong suit with two eyes, and it sure as hell still wasn’t with one. He doesn’t have the chance to make sure his guess before Nureyev is tugging him off down a side hallway, whispering things Juno can’t quite make out. He gets the meaning behind the unheard words; it’s clear as day in the way Nureyev can’t keep his hands or his gaze off him.

They had something to do tonight, something important.

Right now, Juno is more concerned with some _ one _ to do.

He follows Nureyev down the corridor, pulls him onto a balcony. It looks empty, save for the two of them. There’s got to be cameras somewhere, but there are far more interesting scandals going on tonight and their focus is doubtless elsewhere.

Juno backs toward the balcony fence, tugging Nureyev after him. The other man’s eyes are fever bright in the moonlight and locked on Juno. They’re so close, but all Juno can think is that it is not close enough. Nureyev seems to agree, and the moan in his voice when he murmurs Juno’s name (not Dahlia, not Diana, just “Juno,  _ oh, _ Juno,”) when their hips rock together is enough to drive Juno mad.

The balcony’s thick doors lock the chaos of the party away, and the thief and the detective are left alone. Nureyev has him back against the fence, mouth on his neck and dress pushed up to his hips.

“Is that your gun, or are you just happy to be here with me?” Nureyev whispers, and his voice is rough and unsteady and Juno still has enough control left in him to smirk.

“It’s a thigh holster,” he breathes, “and yes.”

“Yes what, detective?” Nureyev teases. He’s putting on a good act at composure, but he’s just as undone as Juno is right now. His breath is coming fast, and Juno grinds against him and he’s shuddering, shuddering, and-

Another partygoer shoves the doors open in a vain search for their own empty balcony and the flash and crash is enough to bring them back to reality. They’re still breathing hard, and Nureyev has to take a couple of steps back.

“I…” Nureyev begins. He breathes in and out, slowly, deeply. Runs a hand through his hair. The mask of Orion Datura slides back into place and he smiles. “Diana, my love, I do believe we have some business that requires our attention.”

Juno snorts. “Sure,  _ Orion. _ Business.” He smooths his dress down till it lies flat against his skin, trying in vain to make it look like he hadn’t been thoroughly debauched moments before. The fabric is probably permanently wrinkled at this point, but he wants to make an effort.

Nureyev takes his hand and the two of them leave the quiet balcony behind them, soon to be occupied by another couple looking for some alone time.

The guest wing is on the other side of the main ballroom. Juno stayed there once, back when he was trying to save Cecil all those years ago, before he’d realized how awful the Kanagawas and Cecil specifically tended to be. He left certain that Hell could have taken some pointers from the family on making life miserable.

Now here he is again, albeit in circumstances far removed from the original. If anyone had told the Juno Steel just-post rescuing Cecil that he’d be back years later, at a grand party and hand in hand with a thief who’d stolen not only the keys to his safe but also his heart, well…

He’d have asked for a glass of whatever they’d been drinking.

The hallways are emptier than he remembers them being, most of the help staff on duty at tonight’s event. There’s the occasional worker, jogging through the halls balancing more bottles of wine in one hand and plates of tiny cupcakes in other, and every now and then a janitor or a security guard.

There’s been no signs of any cameramen.

One of the rare security guards is stalking through the halls now, grumbling about being on duty right now and paying more attention to the person on the other end of their communicator than they are to their job. Juno and Nureyev are tucked into a closet, chest to chest, waiting for him to pass.

Then Juno’s communicator - the one supposed to be on silent, the one that no one should have been calling at that hour - rings.

He and Nureyev freeze.

It rings again, louder this time, insistent.

The security guard looks up at the sound, staring suspiciously around the hallway. “Bee, I gotta go. I think I just heard something.” Whoever they were talking to gives a staticky goodbye, and then the security guard is stalking closer to their hiding place.

Juno is frantically jabbing the Drop Call button and nothing is happening. If anything, the ringtone just keeps getting louder every time he hits the button.

“Who’s calling you?” Nureyev hisses.

“I have no idea!” Juno growls, and he can barely hear the sound of the guard’s footsteps outside over his stupid, stupid ringtone.

“Give it to me, I’ll fix it.”

Juno drops his communicator into Nureyev’s hands, and Nureyev squints at the screen in disbelief. “Don’t you have caller ID?”

“It just said blocked call!”

“Well, now the screen says ‘Pick up your phone, Mister Steel’, does that give you any clue?” The security guard’s footsteps have stopped, and they have to be just outside the only loosely closed closet at this point.

Juno has the sudden realization that he never did call Rita this morning. “Shit!”

“You know what, you’ve got no time to explain.” Nureyev whispers.  “I’ll pay the repair bill.” Before Juno can grab his communicator back, Nureyev produces a knife from somewhere on his person and  _ stabs the goddamn speaker.  _ The noise abruptly dies, and Nureyev drops both items into one of his many pockets before kissing Juno, pushing him back against the side of the closet.

The security guard throws open the door. “This area is off-limits!” they snarl, only to sigh in exasperation. “Can’t you have sex on one of the approved balconies like every normal couple?”

“You have no idea,” Juno murmurs, quiet enough for only Nureyev to hear.

“Hey!” the guard barks. “Are you two gonna get out or not?”

“That depends,” Nureyev says, and the look he gives the guard is obscene and everything Juno should have expected from Orion Datura. “Are you going to come in?” He blows a kiss at the guard and winks. “We’d love your company.”

_ No, we’d really not, _ thinks Juno, and he yanks Nureyev down into a kiss, rough and dirty and Nureyev melts against him. He pulls back, just far enough to bare his teeth at the guard in something that could have been a smile, but probably wasn’t. “You’ll have to excuse Orion,” he breathed, “he forgets himself sometimes, and I-” and Nureyev has his teeth on Juno’s neck now, and there’s no way it’s not going to leave a mark if he keeps going like that.

“I will stun the both of you if you don’t get back to the public areas of the mansion,” the guard threatens, and they actually pull a gun on Juno and Nureyev.

Nureyev sighs, breath hot against Juno’s skin. “This is no way to treat your guests. I’d like to talk to your manager.”

“I don’t care what you want. You aren’t a couple of rabbits in a back alley, so stop acting like you are and get out of the closet!”

The guard escorts both of them back to the main party area. Nureyev is all in favor of just stabbing them and getting it over with, but they’re receiving frequent check-ins from other guards who would doubtless notice if they stopped responding. They’re watching Juno and Nureyev closely and moving them along quickly, and the three arrive back at the main ballroom before either can come up with a safe plan to take down the guard without arising suspicion.

They shove the two of them in through the main doors and slam them in their faces, and then they’re back into the social ebb and flow of the party.

Juno feels Nureyev react before he sees anything - the hand on his arm tenses and Nureyev steps closer. He searches the ballroom to find the person tracking Nureyev tucked into a corner with a plate of appetizers and glass of champagne. They’ve been there for most of the night.

It’s only when he looks back at Nureyev, follows the line of his eyesight right to the center of the dancers, that he sees who caused this reaction. The person he’s staring at looks tall, maybe even taller than Nureyev. xe’s waltzing, sweeping hir partner in dramatic circles across the dance floor, and laughing at something Juno can’t hear. Hir face is incandescent, beaming at hir partner with unreserved joy.

“Is that-” he asks.

“Yes.”

Nureyev stands unmoving, caught in the web of his own past. “J-  _ Diana _ ,” he murmurs. “I fear I haven’t told you everything about xe and I’s involvement.”

Juno can’t think anything except  _ ‘No kidding’, _ and even he can guess this is probably not the appropriate time for that sentiment. “Orion,” he says instead, trying to put into it everything he can’t say about remembering where they are and  _ who _ they are right now, what they came here to do. “I’m here.  _ We’re  _ here. The show must go on, right?”

For an instant longer, Nureyev stays where he is. He pulls Juno closer, almost into a hug. “If you get me close enough to hir, I can pick hir pockets,” he whispers, before releasing him and summoning back up his character. “Of course, darling! Now, we’ve been at this party for absolutely ages and we have yet to set foot on the dancefloor. Dance with me?”

“Maybe in a minute,” he says. “Let me just grab another one of those tiny cupcakes, I'll be right back.” The cupcakes are delicious, but all Juno really wants is a few more minutes to think up an excuse to bow out of dancing. A lady in a gorgeous dress does not a dancer make, and he's always had two left feet when it comes to stuff like that.

There has to be another way to get close enough to hir.

He ducks into the crowd, weaving around massive gowns and strange contraptions that pass for Martian high fashion. Feels like he can’t go a foot without tripping over someone’s fake wings or an overly exuberant hairpiece. Even so, by the time he’s snagged a cupcake and is on his way back to Nureyev he still hasn’t thought up a good excuse to get out of dancing.

_ Or _ , he thinks when he catches a glimpse of Nureyev through the crowd,  _ I might not need to. _ Nureyev is talking to someone, but something is wrong. Juno can’t seem to get a good look at whoever Nureyev’s talking to - Juno is not  _ short _ , he’s just not tall either, and the crowd is insistent and shoving and wild and Nureyev takes a step back and it’s like he’s admitting defeat.

The mass of people separates for a moment and Juno lunges forward, stumbling over someone else’s feet and almost running into Nureyev with his momentum. Then he looks up, and it’s hir. Nureyev’s unnamed ex-something, still beaming like xe hasn’t a care in the world.   
  
“Now who’s this?” xe coos, leaning over to look Juno in the eye. “Your date for the night, Cory? Really not your usual type…”

“It’s Datura, and Diana is a lady, and I will thank you to treat him like one,” Nureyev says archly, and he slips an arm around Juno’s waist to pull him close. He presses a kiss to the side of Juno’s head before turning back to hir. “What do you want, Astrotia?”

“Oh, Datura, always so formal. Call me Dae. And I thought that perhaps I could request a dance, for old time’s sake? That is, if your arm candy won’t melt with envy.”

Nureyev’s hand is almost too tight on Juno’s hip, and it’s all Juno can do not to punch this asshole in the face and drag Nureyev back off to that balcony. Or not even the balcony, just anywhere without all these goddamn people. He doesn’t want to see Nureyev like this, acting so well that there is almost no one who’d be able to read the anxiety written in his iron grip or carefully controlled breathing.

But Juno sees it, and in this moment he’d give anything to help it stop.

He is experiencing a lot more feelings than previously anticipated.

“I’m sorry,  _ Astrotia _ ,” Nureyev says. “But I’m going to have to turn you down. Diana gets overwhelmed by all these people, and I’m afraid I cannot leave his side.”

Astrotia pouts. “Datura, sweetpea, live a little!” Xe’s actually reaching out to take Nureyev’s hand, and Nureyev is surrounded by too many people to take another step back.

Juno reaches out before xe makes contact and grabs hir wrist. “Sorry, Orion’s dance card is full.” He shoves hir hand away and then pulls Nureyev out onto the dance floor after him. “I hope you know what you’re doing with this, because I’ve got no clue,” he warns Nureyev, who’s looking at him with something almost like tenderness.

“You’re in capable hands,” Nureyev promises, and then they’re dancing.

Nureyev is good, good enough to make even Juno feel graceful. He doesn’t know the name of their dance, but they’re whirling in circles on the dancefloor and he hasn’t stepped on Nureyev’s foot once yet. They’re chest to chest, and the tautness in Nureyev’s muscles melts into their movements.

He spins Juno out, the dress floating around him like the Neptunian sky, and Juno feels like humans might actually be capable of flight.

The music slows infinitesimally, and so do they. The waltz or foxtrot or whatever it was slides easily into something that’s really nothing more than swaying back and forth. Juno’s head is against Nureyev’s chest. He can hear his heartbeat.

“So,” he mutters, hoping no one but Nureyev hears him over the music. “How’d the pick-pocketing go?” He doesn’t say what he wants to, doesn’t ask Nureyev if he’s okay and if he just wants to go home and watch a terrible movie and eat popcorn, because Juno would be embarrassingly happy with that or whatever else Nureyev needs.

Nureyev smirks. “A magician never reveals his secrets.”

Juno shakes his head. “You’re ridiculous.”

“But some of them can be found in his left back pocket,” Nureyev continues, and Juno can’t stop himself from laughing.

“Ridiculous _ and  _ shameless,” he says, but he slides one hand off of Nureyev’s neck down to the pocket.

He also takes a moment to appreciate the ass under the pockets, because, well… He doesn’t need a reason to appreciate that. On the subject of business, there is a slim plastic card inside the pocket. It is surprisingly the only thing in said pocket. “Keycard?” Juno asks, and Nureyev nods.

“I think that it’s time Diana and Orion went back to their hotel room,” he says, and leads Juno off of the floor.

They make their escape from the party easily - it’s not even really an escape. The two of them are not the only couple or even triple leaving early in search of of a more private room. The only difference is that the room they are searching for is not their own.

On their way out, though…

Juno looks back over his shoulders just once. It’s an idiotic move, because the past is all that’s behind you and there is nothing good in Juno Steel’s past.

Dae Astrotia is watching them leave.

He shivers a little involuntarily and allows Nureyev to pull him closer than is wise in the cab on the way to the hotel, still cold long after hir eyes are no longer on him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :D if you like where this is going, maybe leave a comment or kudos! they are always appreciated.


	3. too much too late if i'm honest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry I forgot to update last Friday!!! here is this now!!

The cabby glances at the card Nureyev shows him and takes them to the Melpomene Suites, a tall building covered in faux-marble and ugly columns. The aesthetic plays at a mythology that existed long before Hyperion City and would continue on long after the city had disappeared into the Martian dust. Juno and Nureyev fall out of the cab more than anything else, hanging onto each other with a drunken lust neither of them are particularly feeling.

At the lobby desk, the clerk hardly gives them a second glance. The room number is written on the key, so they hurry into the elevator. Astrotia will only remain at the party for so long, and the tracker xe’d hired wouldn’t stay passed out in a corner forever. Xe _had_ seen them leave, but if Juno and Nureyev were lucky, xe wouldn’t notice that hir tracker hadn’t followed them out.

Room 539, the penthouse suit.

Juno has to suppress a sigh. These damn rich people - or rich thieves, more likely. This person had been involved with Nureyev, there was no way in hell they made enough money to rent this place legally. “Alright, Orion,” he whispers, “get us in.”

“All in good time,” Nureyev murmurs, and he swipes the keycard through the lock. There’s a heartstopping second when nothing happens, but then the lock clicks and a little light flashes green. They’re in.

The main room is large - vaulted ceilings and massive windows, all edged in the same fake marble. Or maybe this place is expensive enough that some of it’s real, shipped in all the way from Earth. It all looks the same to Juno.

He and Nureyev agree to split up and cover more ground over the large apartment. Before either of them head out to search, Nureyev pulls two pairs of gloves out of a hidden pocket and offers one to Juno. “Best not to leave any fingerprints.”

“Despite appearances to the contrary, I’m not quite that stupid,” Juno says, and takes the offered gloves. “Meet back here in ten?”

Nureyev nods curtly, and they separate.

Juno remains in the main room, while Nureyev leaves through the first door on the right. There would be plenty to look through no matter where either of them went - it does not look like Astrotia is a tidy person. There’s all sorts of doubtlessly irreplaceable and expensive knick-knacks and devices strewn across the floor. Juno rummages through piles of clothing, looking for anything that could either serve as blackmail on Astrotia or any reason other than good old-fashioned revenge that xe’s coming after Nureyev.

If he’s honest, Juno’s pretty damn sure it’s just revenge. Nureyev’s not an easy person to get over, and if Juno had been the one left alone after their last case, he would have been pissed. … This line of thinking really doesn’t reflect well on Juno, and he leaves it in favor of checking under the couch cushions in search of any incriminating notes.

Ten minutes and a quickly searched room later, all Juno is in possession of is a headache and a rising sense of worry that Astrotia is going to head home early from the party. He heads back over to meet Nureyev at the door, who from all appearances also gained nothing from his search.

“Nothing in the kitchen but spotless dishes and tacky hand-towels,” Nureyev sighs, confirming Juno’s suspicions.

“Unfortunately, nothing here either. Should we search the other rooms or leave while we’ve still got all our limbs? I don’t like the idea of the kind of bodyguard someone rich enough to afford this place could buy.”

Nureyev shakes his head. “We still haven’t searched the bedroom or any of the bathrooms - and an apartment this size is bound to have some sort of study somewhere.”

“You really think we’re going to find something? You knew Astrotia, Nureyev-”  


“Don’t,” Nureyev interjects, face perfectly calm and body eerily still. “That man doesn’t exist, and you should know that by now, detective.”

Juno’s never been one for crying, but there’s a second there where he can’t breathe and something twists inside him. He’s not as good of as an actor as Datura- Rex - goddammit. Nureyev can’t read his thoughts, he’s not gonna know Juno can’t stop calling him by his goddamn name in his head. He’ll make the effort out loud, though. “Orion, then. You knew hir. Would xe really leave anything incriminating in an apartment with such awful security? I know we had the keycard, but we should _not_ have been able to walk right in like tha - oh my god, we should not have been able to walk in that easily. Something’s up.”

Someone knocks on the door.

Juno hits the ground immediately, pulling himself into a large cabinet under the television. Nureyev follows, and suddenly the two of them are pressed tight against each other. Juno is curled around a case of antique disks labelled “Earth DVDs”, and Nureyev is basically spooning him. Luckily, nothing else is in the cabinet.

Whoever’s outside knocks again. “It’s the cleaning crew, is anyone there?”

A second voice comes through. “I could have sworn I heard something.”

“Well, no one’s answering. Let’s just go in.”

“What if they’re _having you-know-what?”_

“What, a conniption fit like the one the boss’ll have if he finds out we didn’t clean the penthouse tonight?”

The two janitors continue arguing outside the door, but their voices fade away as Juno becomes more conscious of the sound of Nureyev’s breathing, his heartbeat, the soft rustle of him fidgeting. Juno would probably be able to feel his heartbeat if he just leaned back, let himself relax against Nureyev’s chest. He’s here, he’s solid and real and more than just a name.

He can’t do it, though. Juno remains still, one arm falling asleep propping up his head and the other curled against his chest. The cabinet is almost pitch black, save for a single line of light at the top where the door doesn’t quite meet up with the wood at the top.

It doesn’t do much to light up the interior, though, and all Juno would be able to see anyway would be the back wall of the cabinet.

The janitors are still arguing, he thinks, but he’s not sure. It’s hard to be sure of anything other than the steady presence of Nureyev at his back and the hard plastic of the case digging into his chest. Their combined presence is heating the cabinet quickly, and everywhere Nureyev is pressed against Juno is almost burning.

He thinks that maybe that brush of something soft (like lips) against his neck, maybe the way Nureyev shifted his hips… Maybe those were purposeful, and Juno knows he doesn’t have it in him to say no to anything right now.

There’s an intake of breath from behind him, and Juno turns his head but before either of them can say a word, the door to the apartment opens.

“Guess those two finished their argument,” Juno breathes.

Nureyev doesn’t say anything. Smart.  

Outside, the janitors are continuing their arguments about various facets of their jobs. Juno has never wanted to learn so much about mopping and the best ways to fold clothing before, and he still does not want to know.

“Oh, Jekka, we better hurry. Boss just commed me, apparently the bigwig who lives here is on their way home and this place had better be spotless before they get here.”

“The traffic is hell right now, we could move slower than one of those ancient shuttles they used to fly in and still finish on time.”

“Still, let’s get moving.”

They shut up after that, but the blessed quiet is upstaged by the thought of Astrotia finding Nureyev and Juno in hir apartment. Once the janitors leave, they have to get out of here. It takes way longer than Juno would have liked for the cleaners to finish. By the time they’re done, Juno is fidgety and impatient, drumming his fingers against the wood beneath him.

Nureyev waits a few seconds after the door closes before he rolls out of the cupboard, ensuring that no one is left in the room. Juno crawls out after him.

“If we take the keycard, maybe Astrotia will think xe just lost it at the party,” Juno suggests. “Then we have a guaranteed way in.”

The keycard is produced from one of Nureyev’s pockets, a slim golden rectangle. Nureyev shakes his head, eyeing it. “If xe really thought that, xe’d either pay the Kanagawas to find it or just change all hir locks. We should leave it here, so xe thinks that xe just forgot it at home.”

“Are you sure? Even if there’s nothing useful here it can’t hurt to know we might have a way in.” Juno is glancing between Nureyev and the door as they talk, knowing that with every passing second they come closer to being caught.

“Detective, I promise.” Nureyev drops the keycard in front of the TV and reaches out to touch Juno’s arm. “There might be something valuable here, but we do not have time to find it and taking the keycard will only make Astrotia more suspicious. Trust me.” He looks Juno in the eye as he says that, pinning the detective to the spot with his gaze.

“I…” Juno can’t think of what to say. “Sure. Leave it.” _I don’t trust you, but I trust myself even less._ He’s not allowed to say that, that isn’t what Nureyev wants to hear. Not from someone like Juno, at any rate. Nureyev nods curtly and takes Juno’s hand and then they’re fleeing through the hallway, running down the stairs and out a side entrance just as a massive glittering limo pulls up to the building and Astrotia steps out.

Nureyev pulls them over to the  side of the alleyway, pushing Juno up against the brick wall. They hide their faces in each other, pretending at intimacy to avoid suspicion from Astrotia or hir bodyguards. Once the entourage has entirely disappeared into the apartments, Juno and Nureyev separate.

“We’d better head back to Orion’s apartment,” Nureyev sighs. His makeup is still perfect after all they’ve done, but his posture is different somehow. Less precise. Wearier. “Astrotia’s tracker will be expecting us already there, so we’ll need to sneak in.”

“Just a minute, Orion,” Juno says. “Remember when we almost got caught by that guard at the Kanagawas?”

“We did get caught, darling.” The endearment seems to slip out, almost affectionately, and the word doesn’t sound like it had before when Nureyev was acting a part. Nureyev looks shocked for a split second at his own words. “And of course I remember, it was only what, half an hour ago?”

_Don’t fall for your own con,_ Juno thinks, except he isn’t sure if he’s talking to Nureyev or himself. He clears his throat. “That has to have been Rita calling me, and if I don’t call her back soon she’s literally going to send out search parties. And _someone_ broke my communicator, so I’ve gotta find a payphone or use yours.”

Nureyev slides a communicator out of a hidden pocket and hands it to Juno. It’s an older model, but should function fine. Juno keys in the number for the office, hoping that Rita will still be there.

She picks up before it even rings. “Hi there, I gotta pick up the phone for customers, but I’m real sorry we ain’t open right now! There’s a big thing goin’ on, so I’m gonna have to hang-”  


“Rita! Rita, it’s me!”

There is a moment of silence before the storm. “MISTER STEEL! You jerk, I thought maybe you’d died or something! Boss, I gotta tell ya, you gotta stop disappearing like this! I called and called and called, and I finally thought I was gonna get through when I hacked your comm, but then nothing happened! I was SO WORRIED, boss, where on Mars have you been?!”

It was easiest to just let her talk.  

“You gonna answer me or not, boss? Where’ve you been! You haven’t come in all day, and at first I thought maybe you were on a case or something and I could catch up on one of those movie marathons, but then you didn’t call or nothing and you ALWAYS call! Except for that one time with that guy you don’t want me to talk about - don’t worry, I’m not gonna talk about him, just saying! It was like you disappeared like that character in that new film, except less cool and romantic because she did it all for _love_ , see? Anyway. Where are you, again? I don’t think you ever said.”

“I’m fine, Rita.” ‘Fine’ was exaggerating things, but Rita shouldn’t have to worry about Juno so much. God knows he doesn’t deserve it. He’d been off all day shopping and looking for excuses to pull Nureyev just a little closer, pretend that something like this was the kind of thing ladies like Juno Steel got to have. And Rita had probably been remembering the last time Juno had disappeared and how he’d been out an eye when he’d come back. “Don’t worry about me, I’m with-” He looks at Nureyev, who’s standing at the edge of the alleyway staring out at the main street. He’s starkly lit by one of the streetlights, all dramatic angles and deep shadows on his face. It’s the perfect light for him, and Juno sighs. He doesn’t want to lie to Rita, but he doesn’t know what to call this man.

“C’mon, boss, who’s with you?” Rita gasped. “Unless you can’t say! Are you in danger? Should I come get you? I could call that Dark Matters lady, she can help!”  
  
“Rita, do not call Sasha or you’re fired! I’m with someone, and... I’m going to go home with him. I’ll-”

“Why, Mister Steel, if I’d known you were with _that kind of someone_ I wouldn’t’ve been so worried!” Rita giggles, the sound crackling with comm-static. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It’s complicated. He’s related to a case I’m working right now - don’t bother looking for it, it’s not in any of our files. I might not be back tomorrow. Or the day after. Just - don’t worry.” Juno paces as he talks, crossing back and forth across the narrow side street.

“Ooo, _complicated_? Sounds real exciting!”

“Rita.”

“Yeah, yeah, I won’t dig. Besides, I don’t even have his name or anything, how would I get anything on him?”

Juno sighs. “You’d find a way.”

She giggles again, and Juno allows himself a moment to wish she was here, to yell at Nureyev until the thief charmed her into liking him again and to offer whatever perspective she had on this Astrotia person. And then the moment ends and he reminds himself that it’ll be safer if she knows nothing and Nureyev isn’t going to be in his life long enough that Rita needs to like him. She’s still talking, and he tunes in again just in time to hear her finish. “You better stay safe, boss! You only got the one eye now, you _really_ can’t afford to lose this one. I know you said ‘don’t worry’, but sometimes I just can’t help myself! Come back safe, okay? I’ll keep the office open while you’re gone - who knows, maybe I’ll even solve a couple cases!”

  
“Rita! Rita, don’t try that- and she hung up.”

Nureyev glanced back at him from the end of the alleyway, a silent question on his face. Juno nodded and then cocked his head to one side, trying to judge the distance between as best he could manage before tossing the communicator back to the other man. He’s a little off, but Nureyev is still able to catch it without having to jump to one side. Practice makes perfect, right?

Juno is pretty sure he’ll probably never be able to aim the way he used to, no matter how much he practices.

Nureyev smiles at Juno and extends his hand. “Are you coming, detective? We’ve got to get back to our getaway car at the Kanagawa’s, and then we’ve got an apartment to sneak into. An exciting evening, all told!”

Juno takes Nureyev’s hand and smiles the best he can in return. The night air is rapidly cooling, goosebumps prickling Juno’s bare arms. He’s cold and tired and his face itches under the layers of makeup. There’s a good chance this Astrotia person is dangerous as drag-racing around Saturn’s rings, and xe’d probably be coming after Juno as well as Nureyev now.

He wouldn’t have it any other way. The detective grins for real, and tugs Nureyev forward onto the street to call for another cab.

 

* * *

 

 

Nureyev is an insatiable cuddler in the mornings, and when Juno wakes up he’s almost too warm. The thief is sprawled over him, breath hot against his neck and one leg hooked around Juno’s.

He’s kind of snoring, and it’s just as adorable as it ever was.

Juno could have had this every day.

He closes his eye. This is too good to get used to, too reminiscent of a future he’ll never have. “Nu-” he starts, shoving at Nureyev’s shoulder, before cutting himself off. “Orion,” he whispers instead, and tries to shift Nureyev off of him. “We gotta get going, we need more information on Ast-”

Nureyev cuts him off with a look; his face is sleepy and relaxed and he’s tugging Juno closer as if in pursuit of nothing more than affection, but his eyes are keen and alert. He brushes his lips over Juno’s jaw, murmuring soft enough that the words are almost lost. “The apartment may have been bugged last night - I believe the tracker realized we weren’t here.” Nureyev’s teeth graze Juno’s skin, and Juno can’t help the slight moan that escapes him when he opens his mouth to talk.

Goddammit, he can _feel_ Nureyev smirking. The bastard knows exactly what he’s doing.

Two can play at this game, and Juno props himself up on one elbow to get a better angle to thread his free hand through Nureyev’s hair and pull him into a kiss. There’s a slow, heady rhythm to it, and before either of them really realizes it Nureyev is straddling Juno. Their hips align and Juno is technically sober but he’s drunk on Nureyev and drunk on this friction between them and really shouldn’t be making the choices he is, but…

But as long as they’re both here, as long as Nureyev keeps rocking his hips down into Juno’s and making those helpless sounds when Juno tugs on his hair, as long as this keeps going - Juno can pretend this is something he’s allowed to have.

They really need to keep working that case, though, and Juno resolves to say something about it.

“We should,” Juno manages to get out in between kisses, but then Nureyev’s mouth is on his neck again and he can’t seem to remember what he was saying.  The hickeys from last time haven’t even faded, and he’s going to have new ones after this.

“Have excellent morning sex? What a marvelous idea, darling,” Nureyev murmurs, and bites down.

 

* * *

 

 

In Juno’s defense, the shower would have been the best place to have a secret conversation anyway, and it’s not his fault they both need to clean up in it now.

Well, maybe it’s his fault a little.

It’s definitely mostly Nureyev’s, though.

Both the shower and the bath are running, and between the sound and the steam there shouldn’t be any way a cam or mic in the bathroom would be able to guess at their conversation. The shower’s large enough that they can both stand in it comfortably, and there are even separate showerheads so they can both clean off quickly.

Jesus, the one percent of Hyperion have way too much money.

Once cleaned up, Nureyev and Juno begin their discussion.

“So what the hell does Astrotia even want? Did you steal from hir?”

Nureyev smirks, but before he can speak Juno holds up his hand. “If you say ‘only hir heart’, I’m leaving.”

“You never let me have any fun, darling,” Nureyev sighs. “I did not steal anything from Astrotia, but… Xe does have good reason to dislike me.”

“What did you do.”

“Our goals were…” Nureyev leans against the side of the stall, staring absently at the tiles. He’s glistening under the hot water, steam curling in the air around him. “Incompatible.”

Juno shakes his head, the movement flinging water droplets against the walls. “What, like ‘irreconcilable differences’ kind of incompatible or ‘murder’ kind of incompatible? Give me something to work with here.”

“A bit more along the lines of the latter, I’m afraid.”

The wisest course of action here is probably just to wait, give Nureyev some time to figure out how to talk about his past without imploding in on himself. But neither of them have ever been very wise, so Juno prods a little more, verbally and physically. He steps in closer to Nureyev, lets the heat between their bare skin do the convincing. “Come on, Orion. I know that look xe was giving us; I know the look xe was giving _me._ Xe was jealous. What did you do?”

Nureyev won’t make eye contact. “It’s complicated,” he murmurs. “I first met Dae as Coriolanus Quartz, and xe was one of the first people I’d met in a long time who could keep up with me.” He pauses, leans in like they’re sharing a secret. The two of them are close enough already that the movement brings them jaw to jaw, skin against skin. Juno doesn’t dare move but he lets Nureyev set his hands on his waist, pull him forward till they’re flush against each other.

Somehow Nureyev can still talk, although his voice is barely above a whisper. “Xe still couldn’t keep up half as well as you, Juno Steel.” Juno shivers at his name on Nureyev’s lips, but he refuses to be the first one to wreck this stillness between them. “Regardless,” Nureyev continues, “Xe stayed around long enough to convince me to don a new name and join hir in lying our way onto a pleasure cruise on Europa to enjoy the offered pursuits and rob the travelling tourists blind. There I was Dmitri Alexandrovich: the type of man to make big promises that he couldn’t keep, and Dae loved him for it. Until, of course, he broke a promise to Dae and refused to sink the ship full of innocent tourists just to ensure their safe getaway. He may have also left Dae to face the police alone, while Dmitri was already off-planet with all of their spoils.”

“Damn.” The curse escapes Juno’s lips before he can think better of it, but Nureyev just laughs softly. His head dips till he’s resting his forehead on Juno’s shoulder, talking to the ground more than Juno.

“We’ve run into each other a couple of times since then - xe met Rex briefly, and I hadn’t thought xe’d recognized me with the sunglasses and the uniform. But xe had, and it wasn’t long after that xe contacted me directly for the first time since Europa. By then, though, my mind was on other things. Other people.”

They both know what came after Rex Glass.

Nureyev pulls back to look Juno in the eye now, and there is nothing of Orion in him. “I’d been Peter Nureyev again by that point,” he says. “I couldn’t go back to being someone else for Astrotia.”

“Peter,” Juno whispers, and Nureyev closes his eyes at the name. Juno can’t stop talking now, he needs Peter Nureyev to know this, needs Peter to keep being here with him. “I’m s-”

“Don’t say it, detective.” Nureyev’s hands are still on Juno’s waist, holding so tight Juno suspects it’ll bruise. He bows his head again, leaning against Juno even as he begins to push Juno away. The thief is motionless in this moment, save for the rise and fall of his breathing. “I can’t be that man for you right now.”

The water has begun growing cold, and Juno hadn’t noticed it until this moment.

Nureyev takes a step back. Opens his eyes. “You’d better head home, Detective Steel,” he says, and the words are not a request. “There are clean clothes in your size on the counter and your coat is hanging by the door.”

He leaves the shower without looking back.

Juno stands under the spray for a few seconds longer because his legs won’t goddamn work and if he stays here then the water on his cheeks isn’t tears.

And then he goes home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> >:3c  
> leave a comment/kudos, let me know how you feel?


	4. the way that things played out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here it is... the last chapter! this is the chapter when the graphic violence warning becomes applicable, y'all. be careful.

Everything in Juno’s apartment is exactly the way he left it.

And why shouldn’t it be? He’d only been gone for a day, it’s not like that was enough time for dust to settle and rats to start moving in.

Although with Hyperion’s rats, you never really knew.

It’s a little cold, and he takes a moment on his way in to fiddle with the cracked thermostat by the door. It probably won’t do anything, but it’s worth a shot.

He drops his coat on the floor carelessly, and his communicator falls out of one pocket and skitters across the floor like an animal. One corner is crumpled in from where the speaker was stabbed, but the screen still works when Juno picks it up. It informs him that he has eleven missed calls, all from yesterday. He just sighs and drops it back onto the coat.

Everything aches, and he doesn’t want to try and pick out the differences between the injuries he still has from those goons a couple days ago and the newer bruises that were happily received. It’s tempting to just collapse onto the couch, but Juno hasn’t eaten since a couple appetizers at the Kanagawa’s last night and his stomach is protesting loudly.

Another thing that hasn’t changed in the past few days: his cupboards are empty, save for a couple of bottles of cheap liquor.

He snags one of those. Better than nothing, right? … He’s pretty sure they aren’t, but can’t dig up the energy to care.

There is something that’s different in his apartment, but Juno doesn’t see it - or rather, smell it - until he collapses onto his couch with the bottle.

He had forgotten that Nureyev had slept here, in that night between their first meeting as ‘Orion’ and going out for breakfast yesterday.

The couch smells like him, that same damn cologne he uses in every identity, subtle and intoxicating and far too much like  _ home _ for Juno’s comfort.

His hand tightens around the neck of the bottle, and he lifts it to his mouth. Maybe if he drinks it fast enough, he’ll skip the part of being drunk when he closes his eyes and pretends that Nureyev’s here and get right to the blissful forgetting part of it.

Juno’s not that lucky.

He never is.

Rita doesn't call once that day. Why would she? He told her himself that everything was fine. So it’s just Juno, curled up on his shitty couch with his shittier alcohol while the sun trudges through the sky slower than Hyperion rush-hour traffic. He probably sleeps at some point, it’s a little hard to tell.

He definitely wakes up the next morning, though. Sleeping on the couch did nothing for his aches and pains, and the alcohol consumed did even less. Juno’s got a hell of a headache and an even worse gnawing in his stomach.

Cheap takeout helps take the edge off the gnawing, but whatever headache meds Juno might have somewhere have been expired for a long time. He takes one anyway and gets up to go to work.

Rita looks up the moment he walks in the door, beaming out from under the brim of a familiar felt hat. “Hi there, I’m Detective Ri- oh  _ hiiiiii _ Mister Steel, welcome back! That was a fast case!” She grabbed the hat off her head and stuffed it under her desk. “I’ve been keeping up on files and everything, not that there were any new files because I  _ definitely _ heard you tell me not solve any cases myself and I one billion percent listened!”

“Was that my hat?”

“You can’t prove nothing! Besides, I don’t see your name on it.”

“It has my name on the tag on the inside brim.”

There is a moment of silence while Rita glances beneath the desk, unsubtly checking for a tag on the hat. “Ha! There’s no tag on this hat!”

Juno sighs. “I’m only missing _one_ _eye_ , that doesn’t mean I’m blind. I saw you rip the tag off two seconds ago!”

“You ain’t got no proof of that, and I’ll never talk, never!”

“You know what, you can have this one.” He doesn’t have the energy to argue this, even if the familiar back and forth is comforting. “Get any new cases you haven’t solved for me?”

And so the day goes on. That day spins into weeks, weeks where Juno can’t get off his couch and weeks where Juno throws himself into any case that lands on his doorstep, from some rich kid’s missing goldfish to the time where he saved all of the orphans in Hyperion City, every single one. It’s not bad work, all told, but…

But he sleeps on his couch until it stops smelling like Nureyev. Every time he sees someone out of the corner of his eye with that dark hair and elegant build he can’t help but spin around, trying to get a better look at them. (It’s never him). He searches the tabloids in the checkout aisles of corner stores for any mention of Orion Datura or another suspiciously newly rich celebrity.

It’s a little pitiful, all told. God, at this point he could live with it if Nureyev never took him back, he  _ knows _ that Nureyev needs to leave and Juno can’t do anything but stay. They’d never work in the long run and even that aside Juno doesn’t deserve this, doesn’t deserve  _ them _ . Not after leaving like that. He just wants to say sorry. To let Nureyev move on and be whoever he wants to be next, without the specter of Juno Steel over every shoulder.

Or maybe Nureyev doesn’t even need that, maybe he’s  _ already _ moved on and Juno’s the only one bogged down in memories of Nureyev’s eyes, Nureyev’s hands, everything about the other man burned into his mind. The expression on his face all those months ago when he’d told Juno he loved him versus the lack of expression he’d had when he’d told Juno to leave.

So maybe the urge to find him again, to apologize. Maybe that’s selfish.

Juno still can’t let it go.

These are the thoughts running through his mind as he zips up his coat and steps out of his building, glancing down at his repaired communicator. The audio’s a little more static and crackle than it used to be, but he can’t afford a new one.

Maybe he’ll get lucky and find a lucrative case today at work.

Juno Steel has forgotten one thing: he is never lucky.

Something heavy slams into the back of his head and Juno blacks out.

* * *

 

Wherever Juno is when he wakes up, it’s oddly comfortable. The detective could almost fall back asleep, if it weren’t for the swelling bruise on the back of his head and his inability to move his arms or legs. He keeps his eye closed, lets his head loll a little as though he were still asleep. The chair he’s tied to feels soft and expensive. Smells crisp, like it’s been recently cleaned.

He has a bad feeling about this.

Someone clears their throat. “Diana, I know you’re awake. Or would you prefer Mister Steel? Juno? Junebug? I can do endearments, too. Chickadee, sweetpea, anything you like.”

He can’t help but crack his eye open at that, meaning to glare at whoever is trying to ‘sweetpea’ him into doing anything.

  
The first thing he sees is a smirk, curling around its owner’s face smugly. “Hello, you,” Astrotia coos, and Juno regrets answering the phone that first night before all this. (He doesn’t, but pretending he does makes him feel a tiny bit better about being tied to a chair by Dae Astrotia).

“It’s Detective Steel,” he gets out, sitting up as straight as he can. His neck twinges at the movement. “And I’d like to know what makes you think you have the right to call me anything else.”

Astrotia laughs. “I suppose I don’t, Steel, but it’s polite to ask, isn’t it? You may call me Dae or Astrotia, whatever you’d like - as long as you’re calling me later.”

Juno does not have the emotional fortitude to be flirted with by another con artist. “Look, Astrotia, why don’t we just get down to business.”

  
“Aren’t we forward? I see why Cory likes you so much.” Astrotia flops down on hir couch and grins at Juno. “He likes it when people are a little mouthy,” xe says confidentially, eyes bright with mirth.

“Cory?”

“Oh, did he not tell you his name? I suppose you still think he’s Rex Glass when he’s not under a fake name. Well, his  _ real _ name is Coriolanus, but I always called him Cory.” Astrotia seems almost gleeful with the idea that xe’s got something over Juno in this, and hir grin grows wider. “Did you not know?”

Juno is having a very hard time keeping a straight face. “You know, Astrotia, I really didn’t know that.”

Astrotia sits up, close enough to actually pat Juno on the shoulder. “Well, don’t worry yourself too much about it, Steel, Cory’s always been very closed off when he’s not acting the part. Did he tell you about how we met?”

“Can’t say that he did.”

Xe claps and grabs the back of Juno’s chair, scooting him closer. “Oh, good! This means I get to tell the story - he was always terrible at retelling it.” Juno’s tied too tightly to the chair to do anything but listen.

Listen, and try to subtly slide the plasma box cutter out of his sleeve. If he could cut the ropes on his hands before Astrotia noticed, he’d be willing to bet he could get in a couple good punches and knock hir out.

“We were on one of Jupiter’s moons - Callisto, I think. I was bored and trying to pickpocket some of the tourists to see if anyone had anything fun in their pockets. You know, notes from a lover, passwords, tickets to anywhere exciting. The usual things. Cory, though. He had so much stuff, I couldn’t believe it! And, well, I had to meet the person behind these pockets. So I let him catch me red-handed.”

“Sure,” Juno mutters. The end of the box cutter is only a few centimeters from his hand, but he can’t get to the threads holding it in place without twisting his arm noticeably.

“Doubting, my dear detective?” Astrotia leans into Juno’s space, taps his nose with one long finger. “You haven’t yet heard of my skills, so I won’t begrudge you some doubt. Regardless, I suspected that once Cory noticed me robbing him, he wouldn’t head straight to the police. I was right, as usual. He was far too intrigued by my skills - he said it was the first time anyone had snuck up on him in years! I challenged him to a game, and as I was soon to learn, Cory could never back down from a game.”

“What’d you challenge him to?” Juno’s only half-listening, because he can feel the cool metal of the box cutter against one wrist and knows he’s only a few seconds from escape. Also, possibly a few seconds from taking off one of his fingers if he’s not careful enough. It’ll probably be fine.

“Mmmm, that’s a story for another day. I believe it’s your move, Steel. How did  _ you _ meet pretty Cory? Did he sweep you off your feet in a bar after an exhausting case? Con you into sharing your life story and your bed?” Astrotia is dynamic as xe speaks, all sweeping gestures and exaggerated facial expressions.

“Jesus, are you the one who taught him to be such an idiotic romantic?”

Astrotia practically beams. “I would love to think so, Detective!” Xe’s up off the couch now, spinning around the room like a kid getting home after their first date and they’re pretty certain this is love. Juno has to tuck the box cutter back into his sleeve fast, wedging it into the fabric and hoping it’ll stay. Xe twirls back around to face Juno. “I was born on Venus, you know. They say the floating cities there are some of the most romantic in the world.” Xe sighs. “I wish Cory’d gotten wind of that. I wish he’d stayed.”

_ I wish I’d stayed _ , Juno thinks, but wouldn’t dare say. Actually, maybe if he phrased it right… “Rex never left me,” Juno says, bolder than he probably should be. “He tried, but he just couldn’t stay away.” Behind the chair once more out of Astrotia’s view, he flicks his wrist. Damn. The cutter’s jammed into the fabric a little too well. He keeps talking, trying to cover his efforts to free the plasma blade with natural gestures.

Or as close to natural gestures as he can get while  _ tied to a chair. _

“I’m sure Rex was different than Cory,” Astrotia’s saying over him. “The leaving in that case was just for another part he was playing! Like when he went by Dmitri while we were on Europa.” Hir eyes go a bit moony when xe says that, soft and happy. “Steel, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how lovely Cory is, but Dmitri was such a romantic! And to watch him switch back and forth between them, it was like magic. Cory’d do anything for me, you see.”

Juno’s feeling the metal against his wrist again, warming to his skin. “Yeah, well, I wouldn’t do anything for him. I tried to get him arrested.”

Astrotia frowns. “That worked?”

“He came back to me.”  _ And the next time, I was the one who left. _ “But I wouldn’t try that, I don’t think Rex would take it well from anyone but me.”

“It’s Cory,” Astrotia insists, quiet but adamant. “Coriolanus Quartz. That’s his name.”

Juno should really not be antagonizing the person who has him tied to a chair, but he can’t help himself. “That’s what he told you his name was.” He’s got the handle of the box cutter in one hand. The only thing now is the possibility that the blade’s facing the wrong way or is a little out of place in his hand and when he turns it on, it’ll slice through a couple fingers instead of the bindings.

“That’s his name! He told me, and Cory wouldn’t lie to me!” Astrotia takes a deep breath and lies back against the couch. “I apologize, Steel, I don’t mean to be rude in front of a lady like yourself. That is a Steel thing, yes? Not just a Diana thing?”

“That would be a ‘Steel thing’,” Juno agrees, “but if you think no one in Hyperion is ever rude to me, then you’ve got a whole lot more thinks coming. These thinks are wearing iron knuckles and swinging right for your nose.”

Astrotia pouts. “That’s rude.”

“That’s life.”

“Yes, I wasn’t born yesterday. I can’t help but wish it were different even so.” Astrotia’s a little icier now, a little less buoyant. Juno’s got to cut the bonds soon, but once he turns on the blade there’s no way xe won’t notice it. If xe would just come a little closer…

“Why are you here, Juno?”

The use of his name is startling, and Juno almost drops the blade. “What the hell do you mean? You knocked me out.”

“Technically, it was one of my guards (don’t worry, I dismissed them for the evening so we could have our little talk), but I take your point. That wasn’t really my question, though. Why you? Why would Cory go running and turn up again so enamored with someone like Detective Juno Steel, Oldtown orphan and failed police officer? There is nothing interesting about you, there are a hundred other people with similar stories! Where is your spark, Juno?” Astrotia is getting worked up, sitting up and leaning forward.

Juno bares his teeth, leaning forward as far as his ropes will allow him. “I don’t goddamn know, you ass! I’m a sharp-shooter with one eye who tried to get your darling ‘Cory’ arrested, got him hurt and wounded and desperate and then I left him alone on a hotel bed and didn’t look back and he still _ came back and I don’t know why.” _ Astrotia’s in Juno’s space now, and they’re just inches apart. Juno is poised to flick the switch on the blade when the window on the far end of the room slides open.

Nureyev steps in, eyes cold and voice flat. “Let him go, Astrotia.”

Astrotia rolls hir eyes. “Always with the formalities. Come on, Cory, don’t you remember me?”

Across the room, Nureyev is still as the grave. “I always hated that nickname.”

  
“Don’t be ridiculous, Cory,” Astrotia coos and then stands up, out of Juno’s reach. “You thought it was sweet.”

“Did I?” There’s a knife in Nureyev’s hand, blade flashing red in the Martian light. The scarlet gleam makes it look bloody.

“Of course, baby. You told me you did.” Astrotia takes a step towards him. Xe’s moving slowly, glancing at Nureyev from the corner of hir eyes like he’s a scared animal. “You can’t say you didn’t miss this! The thrill of the chase, the adrenaline rush. Then I let you capture me like always… Just like we used to be.” Hir words are honey-sweet, and Nureyev sways a little where he stands.

“Just like we used to be,” he repeats.

Astrotia’s almost across the room by now, and getting closer every moment. Xe reaches out, just close enough to let hir hand brush Nureyev’s cheek. “That’s it, Cory. Give me the knife.”

Nureyev is almost unmoving. Only his eyes move, caught between Astrotia and Juno, and his chest, slowly. Up and down. Breath in, breath out.

Astrotia reaches for the knife. “Cory, baby, just let go. I promise it’ll be okay, just trust me.”

“You know what,” Juno says, almost conversationally. “Fuck you, Astrotia.”

Xe glances at him, taken aback.

Juno turns on the plasma blade without a second thought, slicing through the ropes at his wrists and only mildly singing his skin. He ducks to cut his legs free and stands, glaring at Astrotia. “Step away from him or I kill you where you stand.”

Astrotia scoffs.

But xe also steps back. Nureyev would still be in arms reach if xe turned around, but it’s better than nothing. “What are you going to do with that toy, Steel, help me unpack some boxes?”

“Don’t test me,” Juno warns. He keeps his eye locked on Astrotia’s and raises the cutter-wielding arm threateningly. “If you make another move towards-” He can’t think of a name for a second, and Astrotia smirks.

“Towards who, now?” Xe almost turns back to Nureyev, but Juno shouts before xe can complete the motion.

“Towards Glass, you bastard! Rex Glass. Stop, or this plasma blade meets your face.”

Xe eyes him cautiously. Trying to figure out if he’s really this desperate. “Are you going to throw it at me? What if you miss, and hit Cory?”

“You know that’s not his name,” Juno growls. He doesn’t dare take a step towards Astrotia, doesn’t dare risk Nureyev getting hurt.

If he got hurt because of Juno, again… Juno shuts that thought down before it starts.

“You’re right, Steel,” Astrotia murmurs. “It’s not Cory, it must be Dmitri. Dmitri was such a romantic, you know. He’s just dragging the chase out as long as possible. He liked doing that.” Xe turns to face Nureyev before Juno can stop them, but Nureyev isn’t there anymore.

The thief is perched on the windowsill, almost fey in his lithe grace and cast in the orange light of day. “Don’t touch me,” he says, voice still almost emotionless. “Don’t ever touch me or Detective Steel. Not now, not ever.”

Astrotia huffs impatiently, and keeping a wary eye on Juno, walks closer to the window. “Throw that blade, Steel,” xe calls over hir shoulder, “and I can dodge. That windowsill looks a little too unstable for Cory to do much dodging.”

Juno can’t throw the knife. He can’t get over there fast enough to put himself in between them, either.

“Dae,” Nureyev says, more of a sigh than a name. “I almost loved you.”

“You did, Cory, you did,” assures Astrotia, and xe reaches up to pull Nureyev down from the windowsill. “Just give me the knife, and everything can go back to the way it was.”

“The way it was?” Nureyev asks.

“Yes, just the same. We’ll run away from all our troubles, loot the galaxy and move on to find a new one, steal the hearts from all the stars. Come on, Cory, can’t you see it?”

Nureyev is looking at Juno. “I see it,” he says, and then stabs Astrotia in the throat.

There’s a lot of blood before Astrotia actually dies. It’s messy.

Nausea rises in Juno’s stomach up into his throat, and he’s unsteady on his feet. He drops his box cutter on the ground, but he doesn’t know what to do after that. “Orion,” he manages at last. “I mean- Nureyev.” Astrotia is dead. Juno has seen people die in front of him, felt their blood warm and wet against his palms. He’s been certain at times that he was going to die, has felt his own blood crusting his face and seen it streaking his hands.

This is still a hell of a lot of blood.

Nureyev is knelt on the ground, curved over Astrotia’s cooling body. “I’ve killed a lot of people,” he’s saying, but he doesn’t seem to be hearing it. “It does get easier over time. Or at least, I thought it did.”  

“Nureyev,” Juno whispers, and he’s made it over to Nureyev’s side and is kneeling next to him. “Peter, shit. Peter, I’m so sorry.”   
  
“Juno,” Nureyev says. And he looks up from the bloody corpse that used to be Dae Astrotia, looks into Juno’s eye. “Xe never knew my name.” Nureyev leans against Juno, and he does not cry but he’s shaking almost imperceptibly. “Even if I’d told hir, xe wouldn’t have believed me.”

Juno risks reaching out, taking Nureyev’s hand.

It’s sticky with blood.

“What do you want?” he asks. “Anything.”

And in this moment, it is true. Juno would leave Mars a thousand times, and later he’d regret it and spend the rest of his life finding his way back to this goddamn planet. But right now, he would leave without another thought.

“I want to go home,” Nureyev whispers, and leans against Juno so hard that he almost falls over.

“I can get a cab, we can get back to your apartment in no time.” Juno stands, and Nureyev goes with him.

“No,” Nureyev murmurs. “Take me  _ home _ , Juno.”

_ Oh _ . Juno isn’t sure what Nureyev is asking, and he doesn’t dare hope. “You asking for a ticket to Brahma, or....” Nureyev is shaking his head. “Do you wanna come with me?” Juno asks, heart beating like a rabbit seeing sunlight through a sewer grate for the first time. He knows he doesn’t deserve this, Juno Steel is not the kind of lady anyone should try and make a home out of.

But  _ god _ , he wants it.

“I have never wanted anything else,” Nureyev tells him, and it’s the first thing he’s said with any sort of emotion since he dropped in through the window.

Juno wants to cry. He doesn’t, he can’t, not yet. One of them has to keep going.

Getting out is a chore. They don’t touch the body. Juno takes the knife when Nureyev’s not looking, planning to dispose of it later. Between the two of them and the shower in Astrotia’s apartment, they get most of the blood out of their clothes. Nureyev helps them out of the window again, and there’s a hovercycle idling at the rooftop.

They go home.

It’s mid-evening by the time they get back to Juno’s place. Rita knows he’s in and out these days, and there’s no worried messages from her on his comm. There’ll probably be some tomorrow, if he doesn’t show up or call in, but dealing with that possibility will have to wait.

Nureyev heads straight for the couch, dragging Juno along in his wake.

Neither of them speak for what feels like eons but can’t be more than five minutes. The only sounds are those of their shared breathing - Nureyev’s, ragged and unsteady, and Juno’s, measured and rhythmic. Juno just barely has his breathing under control, and he can feel his heart beating too hard in his throat and wrists. Nureyev pulls Juno closer, till the detective is sitting more on him than on the couch beneath them. Even after everything, Nureyev is here, real and solid in Juno’s arms.

He smells like iron. Thick and sharp and blood-metal-tang. But Juno pretends he doesn’t know why that is, pretends none of the past day had to happen in order to get the two of them here, and tucks his face against Nureyev’s neck where he can still smell the other man’s cologne.

They remain that way for a long time. The sky darkens outside the window, the last gasp of daylight fading from the window all too quickly. Nureyev’s breathing barely slows, and more than once Juno worries he’s going to hyperventilate. But he doesn’t. He just holds Juno so close, so still. Juno doesn’t dare imagine what he’s thinking, but he hopes more than anything that this is helping.

There’s no moon tonight, and the ambient light of Hyperion drowns out most of the stars. It’s dark in Juno’s living room, and with his face still hidden against Nureyev Juno can’t see a thing. Nureyev begins to breath more slowly, more regularly. He presses his face against Juno’s hair, and he’s not shaking anymore.

It’s only then that Juno can get up the nerve to say anything. He should probably ask how Nureyev’s doing, if he’s hungry, how he knew to come to Astrotia’s apartment. He doesn’t say any of those things. “I’m sorry,” he says, barely audible. “I’m sorry I left you.”

“I know,” Nureyev whispers. “Saying sorry doesn’t mean it never happened.”

Juno nods, trusting Nureyev to feel the motion. “I fucked up, Peter, I know I don’t-” Talking gets a little harder, but Juno  _ has _ to say this, Nureyev has to know. “I don’t deserve you - this, any part of it. You should go. Like you said you were going to. Like you did after I left, except this time you don’t come back. I’m-” He has to stop, catch his breath, pretend he’s not two seconds from crying. “Peter, I’ll never be able to go with you. You don’t, you shouldn’t, you. I don’t want to trap you here.” Juno can’t pretend he’s not crying at this point, but he can at least be quiet about it, keep his breathing normal and blink back as many tears as he can.

Nureyev moves away and for a moment Juno tenses, sure that he is right and Nureyev sees it and this, this is the last time he’ll ever be here on this couch with this man. But something is glistening on Nureyev’s face, just catching the light from outside. He stays close to Juno; they keep their arms wrapped around each other.

“Juno, you idiot,” Nureyev gets out, and he is crying too. “You absolute idiot, I will  _ always come back.  _ Every time, from every planet, no matter how far I go. I promise. Why do you think I asked you to pretend to date me to ‘fool the tracker’? That’s a ridiculous plan, even for me.”

There are still tears staining Juno’s face but he’s laughing a little, choked off and gross teary laughter that fills a void in his soul he hadn’t even realized was there. “Peter, I’d been moping like a fool for months, did you really think I was gonna pass up the opportunity to kiss you again?”

“I was counting on the fact that you wouldn’t,” Nureyev admits, and pulls Juno forward until they’re tucked against each other. “I missed you,” he murmurs into the side of Juno’s head. “More than I would prefer to admit.”

There’s a note in his voice, something melancholy at the edges of his words. It damn near breaks Juno’s heart and he sits back to catch Nureyev’s gaze with his own. He knows what he’s going to say right up until he opens his mouth to say it and the phrase catches in his throat. “Hey,” he just says instead, and tips his head forward till their foreheads touch.

Nureyev doesn’t say anything, just closes his eyes and smiles and Juno can catch the gleam of his teeth even in this lack of light. He’s beautiful and solid and real, and Juno knows that if he doesn’t say something now he might never get up the courage again.

“Nureyev, Peter, I-” He breaks off to hide his face in Nureyev’s neck. “Shit,” he mumbles into the gap between Nureyev’s shirt and skin. “This is hard.”

Gently, Nureyev’s hand is on his face, guiding him back until the two of them can meet eyes again. “Something you’d like to say, Junebug?” he murmurs, and he’s still smiling at Juno and Juno gets the feeling there are very few people who see this smile.

“I love you,” he blurts out, and then again, slower. “I love you. I never said it before. I wasn’t really in a place where I could. But I kept thinking after I left, that I’d never be able to say it again and you’d never know and I missed you so goddamn much. I didn’t-couldn’t-let myself think that you’d come back. So. You’d never know.” He risks a smile back at Nureyev, small and maybe a little too self-deprecating but real.

When Nureyev tilts his head to press his lips to Juno’s, it’s softer than either of them have dared to be since the last time they were genuinely together. “I guess that makes both of us fools, then,” he whispers. He presses a kiss to Juno’s cheek, feather-light. When he tells Juno that he loves him too, his voice is quiet enough that if he and Juno weren’t literally on top of each other there’s no way Juno would have heard.

He doesn’t blame Nureyev for not wanting to voice the words. The last time he did, Juno disappeared in the morning.

Juno’s not planning on disappearing again, now or ever. He stands, even if he’s still weak for the sad sound Nureyev makes at the loss of Juno’s weight on him. “Come on, Peter, it’s late,” he says, tone brooking no refusal. “Let’s get some sleep. This couch’ll give you a hell of a neckache.”

“Inviting me to your bed already, Detective Steel?” Nureyev asks, and stands. They’re close enough to kiss, but they just smile at each other like a pair of saps. “How forward of you.”

The two of them barely fit in Juno’s bed. They make it work.

Nureyev still falls asleep faster than Juno, but this time Juno doesn’t lie awake. He doesn’t need to make this memory now, doesn’t need to try and memorize this image of Nureyev in anticipation of never seeing it again. He closes his eye, lets Nureyev curl into him on the bed. He’s allowed to have this, allowed to fall asleep feeling the weight of Nureyev next to him and hearing his soft breaths and smelling that cologne.

It’s nice. Juno could get used to nice.

Tomorrow, life will go on. Someone will find Astrotia’s body and someone will suspect Orion or Juno or anyone they can try to pin the crime on, but if the case goes the way most of Hyperion’s murders do then nothing will come of it. Juno will solve cases and Nureyev will fly across the solar systems but always, always come home.

Tonight, it’s just them. Just Juno and Peter, the scrappy orphan from the dregs of Hyperion City and the revolutionary conman always on the run from his past. Tonight, that’s enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys liked this! I know I had so much fun writing it, Juno and Peter are so amazing and I love writing their banter and Feelings. Thanks so much to everyone who has left a comment along the way already! :D :D

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is complete with four chapters total! it will be updating at least once a week, probably Fridays? going to try to stick to an Actual Schedule. anyway. let me know what you thought, comments are lit my life blood. :D :D :D :D :D


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